Primeval Advent Calendar: December 24
“So your mother has Alzheimer’s.”
That’s Helen for you; she makes the biggest secret out of insignificant details (like why she switched to high heels after Stephen’s death) but openly discusses matters normal people would just gloss over subtly. He swallows a small sigh and tries to concentrate on anything but her question, currently: Christmas dinner.
“Is that why you won’t spend Christmas at home?” Helen comes into the kitchen and leans against the doorframe. Becker curses inwardly, he should have known she wouldn’t just drop it.
“No, it’s because she comes up with worse presents than your dinosaurs,” Becker says flatly and holds the spoon in front of Helen. She tastes the sauce and a small smile curls her lips.
“Did she teach you to be so… domestic?”
Becker takes this as a sufficient sign that the sauce is just fine but rolls his eyes at her dramatically, prepared to play her game if she really wants to. It’s a more personal present, after all, than the boots he got her.
“I cook,” he says. “A skill you never quite managed to acquire, did you? But you’ll never see me making cookies, I’m not that gay.”
Helen doesn’t seem convinced.
“You blow-dry your hair.”
Touché.
“I don’t hear you complaining about being served something other than tin food or half-raw dinosaur meat,” Becker replies smugly.
“Who’s Lorna?” Helen asks suddenly as if she just remembered but Becker can tell it has been on her mind for a long time. He just gives her a confused look that, he knows, will annoy her. She knows he’s playing her and doesn’t repeat the question.
“She’s just an ex,” he shrugs, ignoring the tiny voice in his mind insisting that a former fiancé will never be just an ex. “We broke up a few years ago.”
“Do you have a picture of her?”
Becker narrows his eyes in suspicion at Helen’s entirely too innocent tone of voice.
“She took most of our photos when she left.” She burnt them, actually, and it almost made him want her again. Almost.
Helen keeps looking at him expectantly until he finally gives in.
“All my photos are in a box under the bed,” he shrugs, confident she’ll find nothing, still overwhelmed by sudden anticipation as she rushes out of the kitchen. By the time he follows her with a seductively smelling roasted duck in his hands she’s already sitting on the floor under the Christmas tree, looking through the handful of pictures of him and his parents he never bothered to throw out.
“Doesn’t this have time until after dinner? I’m starving.”
But suddenly Helen’s face lights up and Becker has to swallow a silent curse as she holds out a picture he knows all too well. They all look inexcusably happy and fake, as it would be required on any proper engagement party.
“Is that her?”
He shrugs, still not understanding why this is so important to Helen. Her sudden shrill laugh takes him by surprise and the almost manic shine in her eyes sends chills down his spine.
“You know her.” It feels like a bucket of ice is poured over his head and he’s shivering even as Helen fights her laughter to be able to speak.
“Lorna Matthews,” she shakes her head as if surprised. “She was 18 when I met her.”
Just under the surface of her amusement Becker thinks he can trace anger and it seems to be contagious because he can feel his blood boil at her cryptic ways. But just as he’s about to do something - anything - to stop her mad laugh, from one second to the next she turns silent and looks at him with a mixture of calm cruelty and stinging compassion. And even before she pronounces the words he knows what she wants to say, just as he knows he’s going to hit her hard enough to bruise for weeks to come.
“You really did inherit all of Stephen’s castoffs.”